The French countryside has a charming allure – and one of the best ways of lapping it up is from the deck of your barge on the canal Du Midi.
Barge? That’s actually a misnomer. These days one hires a sleek, comfortable cabin cruiser and warbles down the canal in style, stopping at country villages to replenish food and wine stocks or enjoy the local cuisine at a small waterside restaurant.
Add to this the delights of the regional speciality of cassoulet (a rich casserole of duck confit, sausage and beans), a choice of wholesome cheeses, charcuterie and lovely baguettes, and you have the food to complement the rolling green hills and vineyards you glide through.
Canal Du Midi also bisects one of France’s biggest wine-growing regions, so the tipple is very good, thank you.
But be warned: it’s not all play and tipple. Depending on which leg of the canal you choose, you could have your work cut out for you as the number of locks one has to pass through, and the work involved, varies greatly. (More on this later.)
The Du Midi runs through the south of France, and is part of a system of canals and rivers that connect the Atlantic and Mediterranean seas. The canal was built in the 17th century and runs for 240km from Toulouse to the Med port of Sète.
An engineering masterpiece, it has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1996.
In the mid-1800s it was carrying more than 110 000 tons of cargo and a million passengers a year, but commerce dried up almost overnight after the Bordeaux to Sète railway line was opened.
Now there is no commercial traffic at all – it’s all tourism boats and holiday barges and the Du Midi has been saved.
The canal had a renaissance in the early 1990s, thanks mainly to British barge enthusiasts who flocked there to enjoy the sunshine, nature and engineering prowess – and the thousands of trees, mainly planes and cypresses, lining its banks.
The canal has 86 écluses (locks) and drops almost 200m in its run from Toulouse to the sea.
Before casting off it is essential that you have planned your route, and stopovers.
Most bargers begin on a Friday, or the weekend, and you will find the French are not great at regular shopping hours.
At the majority of villages where we stopped it was difficult to find supermarkets and food stores open on weekends – and Mondays. Some stores stretched this till Tuesday, and one we were counting on decided out of the blue to close on a Wednesday afternoon.
So be warned. Stock up on essentials – baguettes, olives, pâté, cold cuts, cheese and wine – to carry you through if you are confronted with the popular “Ferme” (closed) sign posted (seemingly) at will in the French countryside.
Our week-long route took us from Castelnaudary to Homps. We chose a shortish run – 88km and about 40 locks. About 80km in seven days does not seem much – but remember you only collect your boat at 4pm on the first day, and have to hand it back at 9am on the last day, so effectively you are travelling on the canal for five days.
Do not aim for more than 15km a day as your cruising speed is about 5-8km/h, and it can take up to an hour and a half to go through a double or triple lock set, depending on the traffic. Give yourself good time to tie up for a leisurely lunch, or to explore a village at the end of the day. Don’t rush.
These were the best villages (one town) on our route:
Four of us started our voyage in Castelnaudary, a main canal boat base which is set on the Grand Bassin (basin) and filled with pleasure craft.
Castelnaudary is a pleasant town, known as the Capital of the Cassoulet.
We had supper at Hotel du Centre et du Lauragais in town before setting off and the food was of a higher standard than many Paris restaurants. Our table had a lovely mushroom risotto, plump and full scallops, and a hearty, tasty cassoulet. A sturdy bottle of local red wine accompanied a splendid meal.
Our first day was lock-heavy, so we stopped for the evening by tying up to the bank at the Bram bridge. Forget Bram the village itself.
After a lengthy walk into town we found everything shut, except a modern supermarket, which had very good supplies.
Puicheric was a charming village with medieval houses and the river Aude running through it. There is a historic church. We tied up outside for the night and explored the streets. Most shops were open.
It is a pity that only a short distance separates La Redorte and Puicheric as the former is a welcoming town with great mooring places in the centre. There are restaurants at the wide quayside and a nice main road. The town is surrounded by numerous walking trails and makes an effort to welcome bargers.
You must try to fit Carcassonne into your schedule.
It is one of the most dramatic (and most-visited) towns in the whole of Languedoc region. Carcassonne owes its division into two separate “towns” to the wars against the Cathars, a religious grouping which was wiped out by the Catholic Church.
While the lower town has its charms in the crisscross grid of streets, everybody comes to Carcassonne to see the Cité, the double-walled and turreted fortress that crowns the hill. It’s still in real life what one pictures a fairy castle and medieval town to look like – high walls, turrets, pennants aflutter and winding cobbled streets.
It was restored in the 19th century and is now a Unesco World Heritage site.
The Du Midi runs through the plump flank of Homps, a laid-back, sunny town. There are shops and restaurants on both sides of the long quayside, and plenty of facilities for bargers, as it is also a main boating base.
There is an old Romanesque chapel built in the 11th century.
A great supper ended our voyage in Homps at the En Bon Compagnie restaurant, right on the quayside.
It’s a charming establishment run by an Englishwoman and a South African cook.
Great food.
The info
Barging tips
– how not to fall overboard
l You must thoroughly research your route before booking. The canal is 240km long, so mark the villages you want to go to and try to\[denzil.moyaga\]and match this goal with how many locks you will have to contend with daily. On some stretches, one has to go through 12 or more locks in a day while the leg from Argens to Beziers (about 50km) is lock-free. We found blogs by a fellow travellers that had the best information.
l Locks can be hard work. You have to steer your boat into a tight lock with two or three others, get the right angle to glide in\[denzil.moyaga\]to place, and the crew has to jump off to tie the boat and keep it in place while the lock fills or empties.
l Even if you have never steered a boat, it becomes fairly easy after three or four locks.
l Take gloves with to handle rope.
l Walk the boat through if there is more than one lock.
l Try to\[denzil.moyaga\]and get a boat with bow thrusters, they make handling the boat much simpler.
l Plan stops and food ahead as the French are very tardy about shop hours, especially in the country. Blogs we consulted before we left complained about village food shops being closed and we found the same.
What It Costs
l The cruise: We went with French company Le Boat, which is a huge operation running several bases along the canal and a large number of boats. There are several different sizes and layouts to choose from, ranging from 10 to 15m\[di.cassere\] metres.
The boats were big, clean, comfortable and quite easy to handle once we got the hang of it. Our week’s one-way cruise cost R25 000 for four. The boat could comfortably carry six as it had three double cabins and three bathrooms.
Petrol costs extra, about R2 400.
Visit\[denzil.moyaga\] website: www.leboat.com for all the options or book through Sunsail Le Boat, Suite 201 lobby, Marina Centre in West Quay Road at V&A Waterfront, Cape Town. Tel: 021 200 1836
l Food: France has become expensive for South Africans. In December 2012, the rand/euro exchange rate was R11/1. In January it spiked at above 15 to the rand.
In a restaurant, mains cost between e15 and e20\[di.cassere\] euros, which left a bit of a bitter taste. Food at supermarkets is comparable to SA, at about R100 to R150 a head every day for best buys.